


all I’m asking is to be alive for once

by calenlily



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, s6/s3 offscreen meeting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27237739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calenlily/pseuds/calenlily
Summary: Would you help me rise up / Touch my face and watch me try to breathe again- Momentum by Vienna Teng
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25
Collections: I Will Remember You





	all I’m asking is to be alive for once

_Buffy is alive. Buffy is alive. Buffy is alive._ The words beat out an endless refrain in Angel’s head as he speeds down the highway, the only thought he’s capable of holding.

This meeting has to be one of the more foolish decisions he’s made. He’s so overwhelmed with wonder at the miracle of her revival that just being near her now is probably a danger to his soul. But he can’t not do it. He needs to see her, needs to hold her, needs to feel for himself that she is solid and real again.

*

They meet at a roadside diner on the outskirts of the kind of dot-on-the-map nowhere town she’d expected Sunnydale to be when she moved there.

Buffy feels him before she sees him. And then there he is, leaning against the door of his black Plymouth, dark and gorgeous and unchanged as ever. Angel sweeps her into his arms, and his mouth descends on hers, desperate and passionate.

He feels like love. He feels like home. And just for a minute she feels something other than numb and empty. Just for a minute, as he holds her so tightly to him, she is warm in the way she hasn’t been since she woke up in her grave.

He breaks off the kiss but keeps holding her to him, resting his forehead against hers. “Buffy,” he breathes, awed and reverent.

“Angel,” she sighs in return. It almost hurts to smile, almost hurts to feel again, but there’s a tiny spark of heat deep inside her now and she wants more.

She clutches at him and kisses him again, hungrier and needier than the last. She uses her arms around his neck to pull herself up so she can wrap her legs about his waist. He groans against her lips and one of his large hands cups the curve of her ass, helping to support her, while the other spans the small of her back, and then he spins her around and presses her up against the side of his car.

She doesn’t care that they are out in the open in a parking lot, doesn’t care about all the reasons they are forbidden; all she cares for is stoking that spark until it grows enough to heat her body. She wants to be overwhelmed by him, consumed by him. If she can fill herself with all that he is, will it fill up the emptiness inside her? She kisses down his neck while her hands start to tug at his clothes.

“Buffy! Buffy, no. We can’t –” His voice is ragged and panicked, but it seems to come from somewhere far away, barely registering in her mind. Then he is pushing her away, determinedly disentangling her limbs from around him, and the spark of heat sputters and dies.

“I’m sorry,” Angel says. “I shouldn’t have started....”

Buffy’s only sorry he _stopped_. (Would it really be such a bad thing if he lost his soul? Angelus would kill her, and then maybe she’d be able to rest this time ... no, that’s a horrible thing to be thinking. She doesn’t mean that.) But she remembers now why they can’t, and even if the reasons fail to resonate emotionally, Responsible Buffy would care, and she knows she has to be Responsible Buffy. So she makes herself echo the apology and lets him lead her inside.

She orders hot chocolate and sips it slowly; she hasn’t had much appetite lately. They take turns glancing at each other and then looking away, neither knowing what to say now.

“How are you doing?” he asks finally. When she looks up, there’s an apology in his eyes that says he knows it’s a stupid question.

“Surviving,” she replies flatly.

“I guess that’s to be expected,” he acknowledges. “It’s okay, I understand.”

“Do you?” The words come out more bitterly than intended, because how can anyone claim to understand?

He reaches across the table to clasp her hand. “I’ve blocked out most of the actual experience of Hell, but I remember coming back pretty vividly. You’re doing well, considering.”

A mirthless laugh bubbles up within her chest. Buffy looks down at her hands: at the fingers that so recently were raw and bloody, nails torn off in the effort of clawing free from her grave, but show no sign of it now. Slayer healing feels like a cruel joke sometimes; it doesn’t seem right that her body should be so perfectly mended when her heart and mind are a landscape of open wounds.

“That’s not where I was.” The words catch in her throat, but if she can tell Spike, she can tell him. “I was in Heaven. I was in Heaven and they pulled me out.”

His fingers squeeze tight around hers. “Oh, _Buffy_....”

His stricken expression confirms her resolve that this is a truth best left unrevealed. If Angel looks this distraught and he wasn’t even involved, her friends can never know.

“Of course you were,” he says ruefully. “We should have known.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Buffy snaps. “What’s new with you?”

She listens with half an ear as he goes on about how his team has rebuilt since the last time she saw him, about a trip to another dimension and a girl they’d rescued there. It’s not the distraction she’d hoped for; listening to him speak so warmly of the family he’s built away from her only drives home how alone she feels.

He watches her expression grow more distant, and cuts off abruptly. “You don’t really want to hear this.”

“I...,” she starts to protest, but his beseeching look stops her short.

“Be honest with me. I’m here for you, Buffy, whatever you need. What can I do to help you?”

 _I can stay as long as you like_ , he’d promised after her mother’s funeral, and she’d very nearly taken him up on it. If she was lost then, she’s twice as lost now.

“Come back to Sunnydale?” she asks. “Stay with me?”

He shakes his head sadly. “You know I can’t; I think we’ve already demonstrated all the reasons that’s unwise. Nothing’s changed since April on that count.”

She wants to plead, to cry, to protest that what’s changed is far more important than what hasn’t. She’d been there for him after Hell because his need for her mattered more than all the reasons they couldn’t be together, hadn’t she?

But once upon a time, he would have understood her need just by looking at her. If he can’t or won’t see it now, she doubts there’s anything she can do to change his mind. All she’ll do by pleading is make a fool of herself, and if she lets herself break down she’s not sure she’ll be able to put herself back together.

So instead she assays a smile and pretends to understand. “Right,” she says faintly. “You have commitments, I have commitments, the curse, all that jazz.”

“I’m still here for you,” he says. “I just can’t be _here_ for you.”

“I know,” she makes herself say. She should have expected this. Walking away always was what Angel did best.

“You’re strong, Buffy, stronger than you give yourself credit for,” he says earnestly, all soulful eyes as he looks at her. She wonders if this is his ‘helping the hopeless’ schtick. She didn’t sign up to be one of his lost souls. “It _will_ get better, and you don’t have to do it alone.”

“Don’t I?” she mutters, unable to keep a little bit of the bitterness from seeping in.

“Your friends love you,” he tells her. “Try to let them in.”

How? Her friends look at her and don’t see her. Buffy drinks down the last of her chocolate and goes to the counter to pay to avoid his eyes and the feeling that he isn’t seeing her either.

“If you need me, I’m only a phone call away,” he says before they part.

She nods, but she already knows she isn’t going to call. She wonders if he knows it too.

Angel holds her close, one last time, but it doesn’t warm her anymore.

“I love you,” he swears, and then he turns and drives away, leaving her standing hollow and alone in the cold night.

 _Not enough_ , she thinks.


End file.
